


i need your lovin... like the sunshine

by BelovedCreation



Category: Dollhouse, Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-20
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-03-13 21:45:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3397472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BelovedCreation/pseuds/BelovedCreation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They call him "Captain Hook", but that isn't his real name. He is an empty shell that they fill with what they need. But when he sees her, he feels like maybe he can find himself somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i need your lovin... like the sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> Watching Joss Whedon's Dollhouse and I have a major need for a crazy, damaged Captain Swan AU based on Alpha and Echo.

They call him  _Captain Hook_ , but he  _knows_  that's not his name. He knows that he is someone else, he has a personality buried beneath the fog that they have put him under - buried beneath the layers of people they have put inside of him.

He isn't a person anymore. He is  _people._

It confuses him at times, the flashes of memories, the thoughts that don't come from him, that come from  _them_. Remembrances of doing complex math and negotiating deals and saving people... and of torturing them as well. Women writhing in pleasure and women screaming for help. There were moments when he was in control of that, when he rejoiced in being the hero and when he loved being a villain.

But when he sees  _her_ , golden hair flashing and eyes sparkling with a fire he has felt before, when he was  _someone_ , he knows that they are kindred spirits.

She will not like what they do to her. Any more than he has.

They scoop everything out of her and leave her an empty shell. But the glint is not gone, only dulled. They call her  _Rapunzel_  ( _Snow White_  and bloody  _Prince Charming_  are walking about as well, making eyes at one another - they don't understand that this is not a fairy tale, this is a horror story) he and he knows that is not her real name but his dreams are now of her long hair and climbing a tower and being a hero of his own accord, not because of something he was programmed to do.

When they fill him to the brim with someone new and send him to the surface, he takes deep breaths of the fresh air and it feels so  _goddamn good_ to take the control he can, even though he is still tethered to this place, to this cell, to the fucking people who follow him until he completes the meaningless task he has been assigned.

They send him with Rapunzel sometimes and it is an ice cream sundae with sprinkles - a delight. He can  _touch_  her here, outside of the confines of the cameras (oh yes, he knows they're watching at all times) and she touches him back with long fingers tangled in his own and her head resting on his shoulder and sometimes, when he's lucky, he will kiss her and that,  _that_  is when he feels like she has woken him up from the spells that he has been placed under.

He tries to free her from it, to free her from  _them_  when the accident happens and the fog finally goes away and his brain is a crowded space of many voices vying for the one microphone and that one quiet voice in the back, the  _real_  him (Killian, was it?) determines who gets to speak and when. When  _he_  becomes an  _us_  he tries to take her with  ~~him~~   _them._

They keep him from her, like they are fucking protecting her, but they are just damaging her more, because he knows she is like him and he knows that when they empty her out there is something still there, a few drops linger at the bottom of the glass wondering what has happened. And he gets thrown out like trash, always unwanted and unloved and misunderstood.

So he makes a plan. It is complex. It takes months to execute. But it is the way he will get back to her - the way he can find her again and save her and wake her up from the bloody curse. He bides his time and he toys with them, just to get his revenge before he gets the girl.

She doesn't understand.

Whatever they have done to her, it makes it so that she doesn't understand that they are kindred spirits, that they are made for one another. That everything that he does, all the people he murdered and all the people he tortured, he did it for  _her_ , he did it to get back to  _her_ , his princess, the one he is supposed to save from the spell.

He waits.

He can wait forever if need be.

The world dissolves around them, the swirled sugar of their lunatic dreams melting in the cold rain of reality. Why did they think they could do that to people without repercussions? Why did no one stop them? Why didn't they listen when he  _screamed_  in their damn chair and begged to be given his life back?

He finds her in this new world, this dark and twisted and horrible world (he knew it was never a fairy tale, knew it the whole time). He still goes by Hook because that is who he is, who  _they_  are. She has found her old name and she tells him that it rattles around her brain as well, along with the dozens other they have given her.

_Emma_.

But he calls her princess in his mind, and by her surname,  _Swan_ , when they fight back-to-back, evading the blanket wipes and destroying the fat cats who flit from body to body without realizing that there is still someone  _there_ , even after they think that they have cleared away every trace of personality with their cleaning rags.

A smudge remains. It always remains.

He has gained control now. He can decide who speaks and when. He knows when they are in need of a math genius and a negotiator, a seducer and a pirate. He can turn them on and off like switches and now  _he_  is in charge, now  _he_  decides who will come to the surface and who will stay below.

(The psychopaths stay below. They  _always_ stay below, and he keeps them below when she is around because he is done cutting up bodies to prove his love for her.)

He proves his love with his help in the battle against evil.

She lets him climb her tower and rescue her one night after they win a land grab and they crash in an old apartment complex, finding tons of food and central air and a bed that doesn't smell. The gentlemen inside of him (there are at least ten) insist that he should wait, that it is the adrenaline that has her shoving him against the wall and kissing him, her breath hot against his lips and her hands digging into his neck to hold him still.

But there's a sex expert that yells for those gentlemen to shut the hell up and let him copilot.

She must have a sex expert or two inside of her as well, because he has never felt anything like it. It is dark, all bruising fingers and biting teeth. They don't waste much time with foreplay, not this time (maybe not ever). She is already soaked when he lines himself above her and when he groans and enters her for the first time, his mind turns blissfully blank.

For the first time in over ten years, not a single thought is on his mind. The personalities that make up who he is are quiet, and he is  _Killian_  again. And the glint in her eyes is exactly as he remembered it that day he saw her for the first time.

She is Emma.  _Only Emma_.

"You are going to save them all,' he whispers as she drifts off, her bare arse nestled against his groin and his arm wrapped possessively around her waist.

"How do you figure?" she asks after a moment.

"You saved me. And everyone thought I was beyond saving."


End file.
